


now the movie never ends

by safeandsound13



Category: Glee
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, F/M, Humor, Romance, m for language and slight mentions, much new directions feels!!, nerdy!quinn, quinn and puck as finn and rachel, this is a monster fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 09:02:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2767436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/safeandsound13/pseuds/safeandsound13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quinn Fabray, captain of the Academic Decathlon team and professional student, and Noah Puckerman, first class deliquent with some community service hours to fill, team up to lead the infamous Brainiacs to victory. — Or Quinn and Puck as Rachel and Finn, with a small plot twist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	now the movie never ends

**Author's Note:**

> okay so last week i got this prompt on tumblr which asked me if i could write an au in which quinn and puck were rachel and finn. now i don't know if i interpreted this prompt well enough and if everyone is too ooc but my mind kind of took it away and i wrote this 15k+ thing? and i'm sorry if i did it wrong but i loved doing this and im sorry if it all comes across as stupid i know not everything lines up becaues but im fucking excited so here we go! pls review thanks harpies

.

Some people call her crazy, you know. She prefers the term  _dedicated_.

Yes, she doesn't go out on friday nights, nor saturday nights (or any other night for that matter). But it's not like she spends her days knitting sweaters and watching bad lifetime movies with her parents.

She studies. A lot.

She's ahead of regular homework by three months, she tutors college students (in multiple languages if necessary) and she's the poster girl for asian students, except she's a rich white girl.

She isn't some genius—her parents made her take tests when she outsmarted the presenter every question during pageants at the age of five— and while her IQ is above average, it's not weirdly high or makes it more likely for her to be some crazy person than actually just smart. She likes people and it's not like she's the grinch of high school with a hate for people. (She just has priorities, and other people usually don't understand why she has them and what she has to do to uphold those priorities.)

So what she doesn't have time to go see a romantic movie in the weekend or join the cheerleading team or make friends? She studies and she works hard to get what she wants because what she wants is—  _everything_. And everything comes with a price (and in her case, also with a prize).

She updates her MySpace profile with interesting new articles by the National Geographic or Discovery every week and in her spare time tries to teach herself a new language (Italian at the moment) and strictly watches documentaries  _if_  she ever has to waste brain cells on watching TV. Books are so much better.

So yes, she may be on her own but she's not  _lonely_. She has her books and her dreams and the fact that in ten years (when she's won a fields medal in maths and a nobel prize in physics) people will feel sorry that they every ridiculed her.

She's not crazy because she dares to dream.

.

When she hears miss Pillsbury is taking over the decathlon team she couldn't be more ecstatic.

She's been needing extra curricular activities for her college applications (there's no such thing as early, right?)—because apparently the celibacy club wasn't exactly college worthy material— and she had considered joining but that godawful  _Rachel Berry_  had been team captain. That was before they almost cut the program because they sucked so hard. She's not saying it was Rachel's fault, but it was Rachel's fault. They couldn't even get enough members. That's pathetic.

She likes the fact there is going to be a new teacher to take care of the club and to help the others with the study material (at least now they wouldn't all count on  _her_ ) and to guide them through it. Miss Pillsbury might spend a lot of time not touching things and if she does, cleaning them, but she's okay. She's nice and understanding and one time she helped her get on the pill because it would help her acne tone down.

She's better than Mr. Ryerson,  _by far_ , who offered them drugs in return for a part in the school musical. Despite popular beliefs, she was  _not_  the one who narced and told Mr. Figgins about the illegal substances— she _might've_  pushed him into the right direction by sending pictures of a drug deal going down at lunch time but that's it!

(She just really needed this club, and she went to church right after to confess to her sins and say a few little prayers. She's made sure to make it up to Mr. Ryerson by leaving a basket of muffins at his doorstep.

 _Better to be homeless, than muffinless, right?_  She thinks sarcastically every time she feels like a martyr because something always holds her back to forgive herself. Sometimes she's so mean to others, blinded by ambition, she forgets who she is.)

Poor Brett, or stoner Brett as he's better known to be called, is still living down the consequences of that particular druggie incident and what it cost him. Singing and dancing was  _not_  an appreciated extracurricular activity at McKinley High.

Neither was the decathlon team, she recalls, but she wasn't exactly popular anyway.

(She's reminded of this by a football jock— the quarterback of all people,  _what an honor_ — who slushies her in the hallway mere moments after she signs up. If she thought she was invisible before, she was wrong. The brightly red colored slushie in her hair is enough proof of that.)

.

 _And even as I wander I'm keeping you in sight / You're a candle in the window on a cold dark winter's night / And I'm getting closer than I ever thought I mi_ —

"Rachel, can you please turn that down?" Quinn growls through her teeth, looking up from her AP chemistry book as she pulls the earbuds from the fame-hungry brunette's ears. "Some people are trying to study."

"Sorry, Quinn, I was merely trying to improve my learning abilities," Rachel says, unplugging the earbuds from her laptop as she adds, "A research done by Yale university in 2008 has shown listening to a song that gives you strong emotions during studying, it can help you take the information in faster."

"Well, it's slowing  _my_  learning abilities down," Quinn remarks sweetly, sending Rachel the most sugary smile she can muster. She doesn't have much social experience, she'll give her that, but at least she has manners. They're in a library for God's sake. Pushing a book about evolutionary biology her way (because not only is she a little weak on that, to be honest, it may also be a good distraction) Quinn raises her eyebrows, "So keep it down, will you?"

"Ladies! Remember how I told you the rulebook states we need to have at least nine members?" Miss Pillsbury appears from behind a row of books on classical latin and gives them a warm smile. Quinn turns back to her book, continuing to take notes on reductors. Any news from Miss Pillsbury couldn't be better than this, she had a habit of bringing bad news. (She thinks the club almost got canceled twice just last week if it hadn't been for Miss Pillsbury promising whatever to Principal Figgins, and she doesn't want to read the fine print of that.)

"You got us another seven?" Rachel gushes happily, clapping her hands together. "No," the redhead answers disappointingly and Rachel's 500 watt smiles tones down to maybe 100 watt immediately.

Quinn only sighs, not taking her eyes off her notes and writing away. How can they ever win like this? They need members because of right now, they suck. Maybe even harder than back when Rachel was captain.

"But, I did get us a very special member," Miss Pillsbury grins brightly as she steps aside nervously to reveal— no one.

"Is this a joke?" Quinn stares at her, maybe a little too coldly, but if there's one thing she doesn't consider as a joke it's her education and this club could possibly better her chances at joining a good university.

"One minute," she mumbles in return a surprised and frustrated look on her face, and Quinn shakes her head to herself, focusing back onto her work as she hears the click-clacks of heels disappear in the distance.

"Here, this is Noah Puckerman, not only is he very special, but he could also help boost the popularity of this club and earn us some more members," Emma announces, pulling him along.

A napkin is scrunched up and clutched in the hand clinging on tightly to a tall, tan boy's arm, like she's afraid he'll run away if she doesn't physically holds him here (and to catch something from him).

"It's Puck," he adds, visibly annoyed.

"This club is part of Noa— _Puck_ 's community service but I want you all to be nice and accepting," she says sweetly before desperately continuing, "and also wanted to remember you guys one more time of the position we're in with our first local competition coming up."

"I'm appalled!" Rachel interjects before Quinn has the time to open her mouth and she vaguely remembers Rachel being slushied by him a few days ago. Was it a blue slushie— no wait, a green slushie. "Miss Pillsbury you can't do this me!"

Puck sighs audibly, rubbing a hand over his face and she can't help but feel annoyed that out of all clubs, he has to join this one.  _This_  one!

Quinn thinks he's handsome, sure, but she  _knows_  he's a jerk, even besides the fact he slushied Rachel (not that she even cares about that). It's like scientifically proven he's a jerk. If he isn't bullying kids and throwing them in the trash, he's breaking rules and skipping school. She wishes life could be that easy for her, but unlike him, she takes other people's feelings and her own future in consideration.

"How is  _he_  going to help  _us_?" Quinn agrees with Rachel, for once. He's not a good addition to their team, which Miss Pillsbury has conveniently submerged into  _the Brainiacs_  and she's not sure he even has one. If anything, he'll cheat and get them disqualified, because that's the kind of guy he is. "No offence, Ms. Pillsbury, but maybe he's better off joining the musical, now that Mr. Schue's handling it and all?"

"We tried that," Emma answers hesitatingly, playing with the pearl necklace around her neck, "He broke someone's nose two seconds in the first musical number."

"My point exactly," Rachel exclaims, waving her arms around, "My nose is my most distinctive asset, Miss Pillsbury!"

"God, please get the sticks out of your asses removed before it's permanently grown into your bowls," the mohawked boy finally— _but not finally at all really_ — speaks more than two words, rolling his eyes as he throws his bag down on a chair next to Rachel, and slugs into a seat next to Quinn. "It's not like I'm here voluntarily, okay? I'm just here to do my hours and get this over with."

"Look," Emma interjects, her voice a little shaky as she tries to explain. "We  _need_  nine members, cut into three different divisions. Since you're both honors with a GPA stretching from 3.75 to 4.0 we could really use Noa—Puck. We need three more scholastics with a GPA of 3.0 and up and even if we  _do_  have Puck, he's the only varsity member." Emma sighs a little, straightening out her dark green pencil skirt. "We need to take what we can get, guys, or we might not even have a chance at competing, and not having a chance would be worse than losing."

"I beg to differ," Puck remarks cynically but Rachel shoots him a glare that even makes her own glares seem like sweet and loving gazes.

"Fine," Quinn mutters reluctantly, shaking her head. They're in an awful position, really, and she's right. Someone is better than no one. She repeats herself more firmly, "Fine."

"Great, I'll make arrangements," Emma exclaims excitedly before click-clacking her way back out of the library.

"I guess I'll start planning my funeral," Rachel mutters dramatically, as she crosses her arms and stares at words in her book in protest.

Quinn takes a deep breath and pushes her glasses further onto her nose. She leans forward and looks at the only boy in the room. "Just know that if you do anything, and I mean  _anything_ , to screw this up for me, I will make sure the next quarterback or kickstarter of whatever breaks both of your legs at your next game."

"Wow, you sure all are welcoming," he mutters aggravatedly, pulling out his phone and starting a game of snake. She flips his phone close and jerks it out of his hands.

"I'm serious."

"I noticed," he chuckled, glancing over at his phone before looking back up at her, but not before his eyes trail up her entire body. She can't help but feel a little uncomfortable under his gaze, she never gets this kind of— attention. "And you're also seriously frickin' hot, even with the whole nun thing going on, but I could make it work."

She pauses to look at him and she can feel herself blush but she refuses to look away from him until Rachel clears her throat, sending them a pointed glare.

"In your dreams," she remarks sarcastically as an afterthought before taking an English Literature book from her bag and opening it. She sees him smirk in the corner of her eye and can't help but feel weird about it. What does he want from her? She sure as heck doesn't want anything for him, although he probably only has stds to give. Well, he can keep them. The only game she's in for is this decathlon.

He doesn't say anything for the rest of the period but she can feel his eyes on her every now and then, and she's never felt this hot. Literally,  _hot_. She doesn't remember learning about this in biology. Maybe she has some kind of disease? Maybe she's going into onset menopause? Did they airconditioning break again?

Needless to say she isn't really taking in any information with him looking at her like she's something—special, or, or  _something_. (She's not, not really.)

This is really just all fantastic. How are they supposed to be able to win anything if she keeps acting like a infatuated six year old? She needs to focus. Needs to learn to focus, even with people staring at her. He glances over again and ugh—it's useless.

She doesn't even notice Rachel turning her music back on.

_Just a small town girl / Livin' in a lonely world / She took the midnight train going anywhere_

.

Nobody particularly popular joins the club but that's not what they need anyway. They need smart people. Not that Noah Puckerman had been a great addition to that but whatever.

They shouldn't care about the social status of the club or it's members. (Maybe she does a little, because it does sting whenever she has to eat lunch alone or people sigh when they have to pair up with her in chemistry and sometimes it sucks slaving over homework on Saturday nights instead of having a friend to hang out with— but no one needs to know that.)

She's been a social catastrophe for a while now, she can be one for a little while longer.

A boy named Artie who's very good at math (maybe even as good as her, but she won't ever admit that) joins them in the honors division and he brings a girl named Tina who is the first of their group to join the scholastic division. She thinks they might be dating because she feels this really weird tension whenever they're studying.

It could just be Puck. She's been told (involuntary by Rachel, countless, countless times because she won' .talking.) that he could pretty much get turned on by an uncovered calf. He's quite the ladies-and-not-gentleman, she's heard. Not that she cares, because she does most certainly not.

Still, that morning she picks out one of her shorter dresses and wears her hair down. She immediately regrets it when she enters school and everyone is giving her weird stares. God, a (religious) woman bares some legs. Call the police and lock her up, she must be delirious! The anti-feminist viewpoints in this school were the least of her worries. When she enters the library that day to study the rooms falls more quiet than usual. She can't even hear Artie and Tina whispering about whatever they always whisper about, something secret.

"What?" She snaps, because everyone has been treating her like some kind of monster just because she wore a slightly shorter dress that ended just above the knee and took her hair out of a ponytail? It was ridiculous. And no, it did not make her heart feel funny when Puck's mouth literally fell open for a second before he quickly recovered and gripped onto his pencil a little  _too_  tightly.

"Nothing," Kurt pitches in highly with an amused smile on his face. He's one of the new guys who joined the scholastic division and brought their number up until six. Just three more members and they were actually eligible to  _compete_. Now all she had to do is make sure they were all at their very  _best_. She doesn't need nor want anything less from them. And that was just going to be all easy breezy, piece of cake, rainbows and sunshine fantastic.

"Is that Rihanna?" Quinn decides to change the subject, sitting down in between Tina and Puck and putting her bag on the floor, focusing her attention on the magazine laying on the table in front of Artie.

He pushes his glasses up his nose, nodding with a bright smile,"Yes, have you heard her new single  _take a b_ —"

"Lets just," she starts to snap before taking a deep breath, closing her eyes momentarily, "Study,  _okay_? It's been a long four periods."

It takes some sighs and eye rolls for them to get to work but when they finally do it's nice and quiet, perfect to study some art, one of the most failed categories in the Academic Decathlon history. People think they can bluff their way out of art questions, and rather focus on the difficult stuff but it's sometimes things that can be hard.

It is, however, only nice and quiet for a whole ten seconds before Puck nudges her in the ribs and her heads snaps to look at him, her brows furrowed together and she shrugs as if to ask him ' _what_ '. She had just read about thirty words and there he is again. Unfocusing her.

He nods towards his science book, his own eyebrows knitted, too, "Do you think you may be able to like, tutor me or some shit?" She doesn't know if he's even being half serious and maybe it's all a ploy to publicly embarrass her or to get into her pants, yet she sighs.

She whispers back, looking over at the redhead sitting at a few tables down from them with a bunch of pamphlets. "What about Miss Pillsbury?"

He rolls his eyes, "Already asked, said I better ask a 'fellow peer'. Busy with her own drama, I guess."

She bites her lip before offering, "Rachel?"

"Come on, you're way smarter."

Lord, if she could help herself from blushing, she would, but here she is, turning as red as a tomato probably. "Okay. Meet me here after school tomorrow."

"Okay?" He smirks and she doesn't respond, just points towards his book and hold up a finger to her lips. She quickly looks back at the words in her book but all she sees right now are a bunch of letters formed into shapes and she can't frickin' believe she's going to spend time with him, privately, after school, in a secluded area.

Great. She's really pushing her luck here.

.

She finds herself almost leaving since he made her wait twenty-four minutes before he actually showed up. She doesn't really have time to get mad, since she used up all her angry for the day this morning when she got a slushie thrown into her face by one of the football players. Luckily, she's learned to keep a spare change of clothes in her locker by now.

"How did you even get so fucking smart, it's creepy," he asks as she points at picture and somehow she doesn't feel offended by the way he phrases it. He doesn't mean it like that.

She pauses, leaning back on her chair before shrugging. "I study and I work hard and I never give up. Now, remember what I told you about diffusio—"

"Do you ever do something fun?"

She rolls her eyes, putting her pencil down as she takes out the elastic in her hair. "Do you ever do something relatively close to studying?"

"I don't know, I guess that— I don't know. Maybe I'm just dumb," he remarks, yawning while he stretches and she hates how carelessly he throws that word around. She would've thought he was once to claim he was the best at everything.

She bites down on her lip, tracing down her name on the notes in front of her, as she says a little harshly, "You're not dumb, Puck. There are two kinds of smart. Booksmart and peoplesmart." She sighs, looking up at him, and he's giving her a confused look. Her voice softens a little, "Just because you can't remember things from books or know how to write down formulas correctly doesn't mean you're dumb. It just means you're different."

"People smart, are you sure that isn't smart girl lingo for you're a dumb shit?" He raises his eyebrows challengingly and she gives him a pointed look.

"No, it's like, when you, when you like a girl and you know exactly what to say, know how to make her like you back or, or when you don't finish an essay or book report and you always manage to talk your way out of it and, and do you think anyone else would still be at this school if they did everything you've pulled here?" It's her turn to cock an eyebrow skeptically before she concludes, "You have a way with people."

She can't believe she just revealed she knows exactly who he is, that she's seen him around before, but it's not like it matters anyway. Not to him. Like Rachel said, anything with a heartbeat would pretty much suffice.

"I don't with you," he retorts without skipping a beat. He has very long eyelashes for a boy, she notices. And his face looks very nice when he smiles, not smirks, smiles.

"What do you mean?" She asks, not sure if she even wants the answer as she deflects her attention back to coloring in the  _Q_  on her notes. What? Is he going to imply she's not human? She's heard it all before, honestly. She can take it.

'"I never know what to say to you," he says honestly, running a hand over his head , "And you don't seem so easily talked into things.

"See, you  _do_  know people," she smiles and he chuckles, smiling back at her and she ignores the way her stomach turns weirdly and warmly and just—strangely. "But I'll take that one as a compliment."

His smile stretches into a full blown smirk as he puts his hand on her thigh, "We could, you know, make-out or something."

She cocks an eyebrow, glancing down at his hand. She's applauding herself for appearing so cooly about this under his gaze and touch, even though her skin feels on fire. "Are you asking me if I want to kiss you?"

His eyes light up and he inches closer, "We could, you know, if you want to."

She smiles sweetly before snapping, "I don't." She pushes his hand off her leg roughly and makes a point of pushing his book closer to him and picking up a pencil to hand it to him. She hated herself for resisting him when she obviously really liked him, but she knows off his reputation. She can't afford herself to get lost in the way he looks at her— she wants  _everything_ , remember. (She had hoped her everything wouldn't have included him.)

He rolls his eyes, sighing deeply as he takes the pencil, he hesitates, sounding a little skeptic, "You really think I'm smart?"

"I do, and I would know since I'm sooooo smart myself," she says half teasingly, poking his arm with her own pen and she doesn't know why it's so easy to talk to him and joke around when she barely knows him, just heard of him and seen him around.

"Well, since you totally just said I know people, I can tell you're fucking in to me," he smirks, catching her off guard as he takes her glasses off her nose, not even giving her time to protest. She blinks a few times, before her vision gets a little less blurry.

"And you're really pretty," he adds as an afterthought, putting her glasses down on the table and moving her hair out of her face. He leans closer and she moves further back into her chair.

"Telling me I'm pretty is not going to cut it for me," she answers firmly, all her defenses close from crumbling. He probably has a set of lines he uses on every girl.

"I normally don't tell girl they're pretty, just that they're hot or sexy, and it's not like you're not hot or sexy," he says, moving his chair closer to hers so she's pretty much boxed in. "But you're also the most beautiful girl I've ever seen." He seems a little surprised with the words that just came out of his mouth but he quickly hides it, sending her a smirk. God, she  _hates_  his smirk. She's feeling lightheaded.

"I—" she starts, but her voice falters, her mouth half open and feeling dry. She doesn't actually know what to say in return. He leans closer and connects their lips and she doesn't know what she's doing, okay? Call it a moment of weakness, but suddenly he's pulling her into his lap and his tongue is in his mouth and she's never actually kissed like this before and she's feeling funny. Her hands are on the side of his face as she leans into him as close as possible, that is until she feels something pressing into the inside of her thigh. She gasps, suddenly aware of the situation she's in and quickly scrambling onto her feet. She straightens her dress with one hand while she throws her stuff into her bag with the other.

"I—I, uhm, read page 81 till 90," she stammers, before mumbling something about a train she needs to catch. The fact they don't have a train anywhere nearly close to McKinley is besides the point.

The point is that she, captain of the Brainiacs, kissed Noah Puckerman, number 20 in the football team with some very important task probably. They're social enemies. She hates everything he's about. And that kiss felt _really_  good.

.

Finn, the quarterback, joins their club in the varsity division which only has them two members short. At first, she's a little skeptical of it, until  _Rachel_  out of all people convinces her they don't have time to be picky— what, with locals two weeks away?

Since Miss Pillsbury is busy with her private  _fifty shades of grey book/ poetry slam club_  or whatever, they don't have any other choice than to take him. Who are they to turn away a willing student? Besides, he claims he's doing this for extra credit and to get into college, so at least he has an actual reason to join.

Unlike Puck, who is only here because he has to be. She really, really likes him and he's been nice for the past couple of weeks, not much like his usual pig-self and he hasn't even mentioned their,  _thing_ , once. She thought the whole school would've known about his new conquest by the next day. (Turns out he didn't tell  _anyone_ … had she been that bad?)

Whatever. Maybe it was the wake-up call she had needed. He wasn't interested in her as anything other than a friend and that was good— because they could both focus on what they were really here for.

Now that there are two popular people in their group you would think the hazing would at least decrease. Well, they all thought wrong. The majority of the club still gets slushied every day, they get locked into portable toilets, the library gets toilet-papered every other day and last week they burned Artie's books in the courtyard.

The slushies aren't that bad for the others really, they're all used to it, but she can see it's taking it's toll on Finn and Puck. They're not used to being on the bottom of the social food chain.

Santana and Brittany, two cheerleaders join their club which brings them up to nine. Since Santana and Puck used to date (so she's heard, it's not like she wasted her time stalked them on Facebook or something) so she figures they joined to spend more time with them. Santana fills up their scholastic division, and Brittany their varsity.

Santana and Puck are constantly touching and flirting and laughing and she thinks Rachel's into Finn and then there's Artie and Tina constantly sharing the same chair so she's usually the only one studying with Kurt helping Brittany figure out how to spell her name. It's not that she cares, or is jealous or anything, but don't they have a competition in a week? It doesn't seem likely they can win if they're all a bunch of unmotivated horny teenagers.

.

She quits. She doesn't like losing. All her life she's won everything she's participated in, because that's what she does. She wins. And now that it's no longer only her, but an entire team, and they don't seem to care, at all, what's the point?

Puck, ugh Puck, he tries to convince her to come back by taking her out to a bowling rink (she only goes because her mother makes her go, pulling the you never go out card) and paying for a pizza. She doesn't know what to think they entire time because 1) he kind of has a girlfriend and 2) he never goes on dates as far as she knows (he skips that part usually) and 3)  _she_  never goes on dates.

"How's the group doing?" She asks uncomfortably over a small piece of salami pizza (she normally never eats this many calories), trying to break the awkward tension that was caused by an awkward hug that lasted two seconds too long when she scored a spare with his help.

"They all miss you," he says, his mouth half full and she laughs, even though it's kind of disgusting. Her laughter dies down when he adds, "I miss you."

She's not entirely sure if he's saying this because if she doesn't come back and they lose he has to spend the remains of his community service hours picking up trash from the side of road or in jail, or if he actually means it. Which would be worse.

Her heart flutters nonetheless and she sends him a small smile, trying to joke, "They just miss my unflinching ability to be able to name the entire periodic table alphabetically or by number of protons."

"No," he answers honestly, finally putting his food down as he clears his throat. "They—they're your friends."

"Are you my friend?" She asks quietly after wiping her mouth with a napkin, because she isn't sure that he is. Acquaintances, maybe. Acquaintances who kiss occasionally, maybe.

"No," he repeats, a cheeky grin stretching across his face, "I hope not."

She looks at him, clearing her throat after a moment and getting up, "I should get back.  _Study_. I have a book report due next week, so."

He gets up too, nodding as he throws his napkin onto the plate. "Right. I'll drive you home."

"No, no, that's.." She trails off, not being able to come up with an excuse that would explain why she'd rather walk home in the dark by herself without a jacket. The real reason is that she needs to get over this little crush she has on him. It's getting out of hand and sitting next to him in a car for ten minutes isn't going to help.

"What?" He asks, raising his eyebrows. "Afraid to get into a car with the one and only Puckfasa?"

"I wasn't before, but now I know you call yourself Puckfasa? Yes," she laughs a little despite her best effort to not give him any ideas about what this is.

"It's better than Sad Sack, which is how Brittany has officially started calling me since you left," he confesses with a fake grimace and she tries hard to hide the grin forming on her face.

"You're an egghead," she comments and he breaks into a big smile, the first one she's seen tonight she thinks he actually means.

"An egghead? Oh really?" He chuckles, moving some of her blonde locks out of her face and putting his hand on her face. She suddenly realizes how close they are and she knows this isn't a great plan. Her thoughts are confirmed when she finds his lips on her and he tastes like pizza cheese and coca cola and him and she can't think straight.

"Please come back," he whispers against her lips immediately after he pulls away and she shakes her head because he just gave her another reason not to. She knows why he's doing this, and it's not because he likes her. If he did, he would dump Santana and be with her. Yet, he didn't but took her out on a date and then proceeded to kiss her. Why? Because he probably doesn't want to go back to juvie. Or he's cruel, and likes to lead her on.

"I can't."

She rushes off before she can even take so much as another look at him, afraid she'll change her mind.

.

Miss Pillsbury, who was finally able to pull herself away from Mr. Schuester (who's married by the way, talk about boundaries), finds her sitting on the bleachers. She's  _not_  watching the football team practice, she just needed some fresh air. (If she were, she'd be required to watch Santana and Puck make out every two seconds. So, she wasn't.)

"Quinn, the team needs you," Emma puts her gloved hand on Quinn's shoulder carefully, and it takes everything in her not to comment on the fact it's a hundred degrees outside. She can't take her anger out on other people.

"What about what I need?" She retorts, not bothering to turn her head away from Santana pushing his tongue inside of Puck's mouth. She grimaces, before finally looking at her guidance counselor/former decathlon coach. "I need a winning team, Miss Pillsbury. I can't keep wasting my time."

"Is it really just all about winning to you?" Emma wonders, a tone of disappointment in her voice, "Because then I don't think I have the right Quinn Fabray in front of me. The girl who volunteers to help out in church in her spare time and spends christmases feeding the homeless and tutors kids for free, because she just wants to see them improve."

She doesn't say anything, just likes to watch this boy, she kissed once, do the exact same thing with a girl, who just last week called her a  _virgin harpie_  and somehow implied she was fat, because she likes to feel stupid. She should've known better.

"Being part of something great, isn't that enough?" Emma adds after a moment, staring at the side of the blonde's face, "Doesn't that make you great?"

It's quiet for a second, besides Coach Tanaka's voice yelling at the guys and the occasional sound of someone being bodyslammed into the ground.

Quinn turns to look at her teacher, and she's still there.

"What's there to lose? We both know Principal Figgins said he'd ban the club if we didn't win regionals." Emma sends her a challenging look before carefully getting up and leaving her to her thoughts.

She sighs, and shakes her head. Now she  _has_  to rejoin. Who the heck even asked her to come over here and convince her to come back? This was not what she wanted or needed from or expected when she joined this club.

The next day she's back in the library though, and Rachel hugs her tightly and Tina and Artie high five her and Kurt thankfully tells her he almost didn't survive without her here and she realizes it's good to be back. Even Santana manages to muster a tiny smile together.

When everyone's gone except for her and she's still collecting her stuff, Puck comes back with an excuse about forgetting his calculator or whatever, and he  _kisses_  her. It's not like the ones they shared before but softer, and slower and shorter. He smirks before he jogs back to.. Probably his girlfriend.

.

They win. But only because their competition forfeits because their captain apparently made out with their coach and then the captain's boyfriend punched the teacher/coach and they're both in custody.

But they won, and that's what matters, she guesses. If they didn't there wouldn't be a club right now and she wouldn't have time to kick their butts about the scholastics low knowledge about social science and the varsities royally screwing up their subjective speech event. Even Artie and Rachel weren't up to speed when it came to literature. The only thing they all did well in was music, but she needs this word music replaced with everything.

"If we want to win regionals we need to work harder. That means more studying and no joking around during studying hour. We need to focus more on the subjective events, because to be honest your essays we're all weak," she tells them firmly as she leans against their table in the library.

"God, Fabray, stop being so fucking uptight all the time," Santana comments, rolling her eyes and it's funny, because Quinn noticed the smile on her face when they won and she thinks she  _actually_  likes to be here.

"Excuse me?" She looks back at the Latina and notices most of the group nodding along with Santana.

"Well, Mary Sue, how about you take that fucking st—" Santana smirks, crossing her arms.

"What she means to say is, lighten up," Puck nudges her in the ribs softly, sending her a smile and she feels Santana's scowl on her.

"Fine, we can celebrate," Quinn mumbles reluctantly, basically against her will but she can't say no when he's smiling at her. "But! Just for today."

The group emits into loud cheers and before she knows it the library has turned into a full blown house party. Puck broke into Rachel's dad's liquor cabinet and brought them booze and Finn busted out his personal snack collection he kept in his locker for when he was hungry and Kurt is blasting his favorite Beyoncé songs.

She laughs as she watches Rachel burp loudly before holding onto an annoyed Tina, and grabbing onto one of her boobs in the process. She shakes her head and takes another sip of her drink. It tastes way too much like alcohol for her to like the taste, but she could practically hear Santana call her little miss perfect. Puck sits down next to her on the table and they both watch Kurt attempting to teach Brittany the walsh, which looks particularly weird to the music that's playing.

 

_She can be eighteen (eighteen) with an attitude / Or nineteen kind snotty actin' real rude / But as long as you a thicky thicky thick / Girl, you know that it's on (know that it's on)_

He looks over at her now and then and one time, she has the courage to look back and she feels like she can get no air inside of her lungs. She likes him a lot, but if he doesn't like her back enough to be only with her, there's no point. Besides, looking at this group of people, that have become her friends, she likes  _all_  of them a lot.  _Even_  Rachel. And perhaps, that's all that she needs. Friends.

.

Her and Artie have an official quiz off to see who's better. They both have a 3.97 grade point average and have been fighting over who's better for weeks. Finn decides they should settle it for once and for all.

She wins.

.

For some reason, Miss Pillsbury suggests they split into groups of two to help each other with their weaknesses. She puts their names into an empty fishbowl and because they're an uneven number, she ends up paired to Kurt and Puck ends up paired with Miss Pillsbury.

It's all fun and games until Puck makes a comment about Miss Pillsbury's ass and she trades with Quinn, just to be safe. At least Kurt is physically unable to develop a crush on her.

They don't study a lot, and not because of  _that_  reason. It's because being new to this friends thing or whatever, she's discovered a new thing. Worry. She's seen Tina grow quieter and quieter as her belly grew bigger and bigger. They found out a few weeks ago she was pregnant and Artie was the father and it couldn't have been easy on her.

"Do you think Tina's okay?" Quinn asks Puck mindlessly as she continues to scribble down a few notes she wants to explain to him later.

"T-T-Tina?" Puck chuckles as he looks up from his math textbook with a skeptical look, "Besides the fact that she's knocked up?"

She bites down on the inside of her lip, "I mean, Artie is… A nice guy but he's been taking it very hard."

He leans back into his chair, pushing his notebook away, before putting his arms behind his head, "He's probably not even the father. They haven't had sex yet and she told him that it happened when they were in a hot tub or something? I don't know, it sounds fucking shady to me."

"What are you saying?"

"She probably cheated, and she got pregnant and she was ashamed, of the fact she cheated or maybe of who it was. Maybe it's Kurt or Artie's dad. Whatever. It's fucked up, but, we both know you can't get pregnant faster in hot water," he gives her a look, like he knows exactly what happened. Like he can imagine why or what she did or he did.

Quinn sits up straight, narrowing her eyes, "You think— you think she's  _lying_?"

He shrugs carelessly, challenging her, "Wouldn't you?"

She helps organize a bake-sale to pay for Tina's expensive appointments and maternity clothing, knowing that with one wrong move—she could've been in her shoes.

.

Kurt offers her a make-over.

At first, she's reluctant because she's not the kind of girl that strives for a better appearance, she strives for a higher GPA. To her embarrassment, Kurt knows exactly why she  _should_  have one.

She's changing her books when she spots Puck and Santana making out against a wall, she sighs loudly until Kurt startles her by slamming her locker shut.

"Oh, hi Kurt," she stammers, throwing her bag over her shoulder. "What's up? Did you want my notes on the second world war?"

He seems unsure of what he's doing before he finally speaks, "Hi Quinn." They start walking as he continues to talk, "I could give you a makeover, you know?"

She huffs, laughing dryly to herself, "No thanks, Kurt, I think I'm fine."

"Puck likes girls that dress more  _excitingly_ ," Kurt continues, looping his arm through hers. She turns her head to look at him, frowning. "Why would I care what Puck likes?"

"Because you like him," he retorts, and they stop walking. Kurt raises his eyebrows, "Don't even try to deny it Quinn. When you're not looking at words and trying to remember them, you're looking at him."

She opens her mouth to say countless of things, before she looks around and lowers her voice, "I—I don't. I don't like him."

"Yes, you do. And it's time to fight for him. Don't worry, your secret's safe with me," Kurt winks as he pulls on her knee long sundress. With a sigh he remarks, "This is so Nicole Kidman before she knew how to dress herself."

"W—What?" Quinn says distractedly, looking over back at Puck to make sure he didn't hear anything that just went down. He's still busy swapping spit with Santana, so she guesses he didn't.

"I know just the outfit for you."

.

She can't believe she let Kurt convince her to wear this. And to school of all places! What's next? Showing up to church in a bikini? She pulls on the short plaid skirt that barely covers her thighs, and check her heavy make-up in the mirror one last time. Taking a deep breath and pulling her white blouse down to cover her stomach she steps out of the bathroom.

All eyes are on her, but she remembered what Kurt told her after he referred to the skirt as making her look ' _bootylicious_ ', whatever that may mean. He told her to focus on thing only, and that was Puck. Also, she should ignore him. Okay.

The red heels she's wearing are already hurting her feet and she doesn't really know if the white socks are helping besides how can she focus on walking when all she can think about is  _please don't let this blouse slip any further down my shoulder because it's barely covering the red lacy bra as it is_? Not to mention the fact these contacts are making her eyeballs itch like crazy.

Finally she spots Puck and she puts her hand on her hip, strutting right passed him. It works because two seconds later he's walking right next to her with huge eyes and a surprised look on his face. "Q—Quinn?"

"Oh, hi, Puck," she clears her throat, not even bothering to look at him and trying to remain cool. Cold and mysterious, two keywords Kurt made her recite twenty times. "Didn't see you there. Do you want something?"

"Yeah, yeah.. I.." He trails off, swallowing hard and she sends him a bright smile.

"Now that I have your undivided attention, I can't make it to our tutor session this afternoon and I was wondering if instead you could come over to my house. How's tonight? At eight?"

He smirks, "If there's no other way. Sure."

She nods curtly, hiding a smile, before walking straight past him and joining Kurt.

"Objective achieved. Commence phase two."

"Does this mean I can dress back into my own clothes?"

Kurt snaps, "Never again."

.

"Just a second!" She call from the bathroom as she looks in the mirror. She isn't sure she can actually do this. He's sitting one room away from her, probably on her bed and she looks ridiculous and she likes him a lot and her parents aren't home and he's going to think she's insane as soon as she steps out of the safety of the bathroom.

Of course, she had to pick the one night her parents were away to see some sort of ballet recital. She had texted him an hour ago to let himself in through the backdoor but she wished she hadn't. She should've just cancelled.

She turns in front of her mirror, looking at the skintight dress she's clad in and she's never felt this  _huge_. Taking a deep breath she decides to just go out and tell him she's sick or something. But as soon as she does and she sees the look on his face, she feels better. At least  _he_  thinks she looks pretty.

"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting," she stammers, in a voice that's supposed to be seductive but comes out more as nervous.

"It's fine, but, Quinn— what are you doing?" He asks honestly, frowning as he looks at her. At her, clad in a skintight black dress that is see through on the sides and looks more like a slip than anything else.

"I'm here to tutor you, remember?" She says a little offended.

He wipes his hands on his jeans and shakes his head, "You, you look.. different."

"Do I look that horrible?" Her voice is small as she sits down next to him, taking her hair out of the bun it's in before putting her hands on her thighs to cover them.

He hesitates, before he reaches to grab on of her hands. "It's not that, believe me," his eyes land on her body again before he looks up at her, "It's just not you. You're special, I like that about you."

Her face lights up a little as she gazes back into his eyes, to see if he means any of it, "You like me?"

" _Yeah_ , I think you make the way you dress work for you because you don't care what other people think. Hell, I think you'd look amazing in a garbage bag," he smiles as he squeezes her hand.

"Do you think Santana would look great in a garbage bag, too?" She says before she can stop herself and he looks taken back as he tightens his jaw.

"It's not— it's not that simple," he claims, running a hand over his mohawk.

"Then explain it to me, I think I can keep up," she exclaims, because he's just leading her on, isn't he? He thinks he can have the best of both worlds and he doesn't care about her. If he did, he wouldn't be here, he wouldn't keep giving her hope.

He lowers his voice, as if to imply he's serious.  _As if_. "Santana, she understands who I am, what I do. We're the same. You… You're too good. I mean, there's a fucking picture of Jesus on your wall."

Tears spring in her eyes as she realizes he's lying. He doesn't mean any of it. She looks at the ceiling because if she looks anywhere else, she'll cry and she doesn't want him to have one more piece of her. "I—I think you should, you should leave."

"Quinn.." He tries but she refuses to look away from the ceiling, until he leaves, because that's what he does. He keeps on leaving her. She doesn't want to be the stolen kiss after class when nobody's looking, or the quick _fuck_  in the back of his car before school. She wants to be his everything, and she knows that's a lot to ask for, but she knows she deserves it.

.

One week away from sectionals and the group is falling apart. Tina is pregnant and Artie's the father but Santana somehow revealed to everyone that Mike, a guy from the football team, is  _actually_  the father in one breathe with the fact Kurt was capital G gay and his object of affection was Puck (which explains the make-over ordeal). In addition, Finn and Rachel, who were apparently casually dating, are fighting because Brittany gave her bra to Finn and he hid it in his locker. She's not entirely sure how this all happened but it happened.

She corners Brittany in between AP Chemistry and Biology, the only ten seconds she's not attached to the hip with Santana, and asks her about the bra because she remembers her saying she was afraid of Finn because he looked like an ogre. The truth is revealed and it's up to her to fix it.

And Puck, because like it or not, he's their leader as much as she is right now. Even if it's by default.

"I need to talk to you," she states, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and pulling him into a corner next to a few abandoned lockers and away from whatever bimbo he was flirting with now. No matter if they were in a fight or not, this needed to be fixed.

"Ah, couldn't stay away, could you?" He smirks and she glares at him, slapping his chest.

She straightens her light purple sweater and puts a stray of blonde hair behind her ear, trying not to think of the fact he said he liked the dresses she wore, that he liked  _her_. "Your girlfriend and her best friend have been sabotaging us the entire time."

"What are you talking about?" He frowns, his gaze following a pair of tan legs as they walk past them. She pulls his face back to look at hers, because doesn't he care? Doesn't he care their group is falling apart? She likes these people, for better or worse, and not just because for the first time in years she hasn't eaten lunch alone and actually talked to someone about anything else besides school and the fact that she finally feels accepted for who she is. She likes these people, they're her  _friends_. And even if she can't get them all back together in time for sectionals, she still needs to try.

"I talked to Brittany and she admitted Coach Sue, who harbors a hatred towards miss Pillsbury for being ginger, had her and Santana spying to find out our weaknesses and break us up and we were too blind to see it," she confesses truthfully, mad at herself for not realizing it. Santana hadn't been smiling because she liked to be in their club, she was smiling because she was one step closer to victory.

"I don't get it, why would they even do that?" He sends her a confused look and sounds a little annoyed at her for bringing it up. Like he has somewhere better to be. As if.

"Why do you think Santana conveniently let it slip she overheard Mike and Tina talking about how much more asian her baby would look if he fathered it and not Artie?" Quinn cocks an eyebrow because either he doesn't want to see this, or he really is as dumb as he pretends to be.

"The dude deserved the truth, what can I say," Puck answers dryly, his eyes shifting off elsewhere again.

She huffs loudly, ready to stomp down her foot like a two year old if necessary, "Is that why she outed Kurt? He's too ashamed to come to school, Puck. Stop defending her."

He lets out an annoyed sigh, tightening his jaw. "I'm sure it'll blow over, do you want to continue this jealousy thing you're doing right now in an empty classroom or can I get back to Chelsea?"

She ignores his low dig and tries to think of something that will make him care, or stop pretending he doesn't. "Brittany broke up Finn and Rachel, he is your  _best_  friend and he's too depressed to even get dressed into anything besides that puffy vest he's been wearing all week, doesn't that count for something?"

"Look, Quinn, I don't.. I'm not cut out for this. I joined this club as my community service, remember?" He leans his back against the wall tiredly and she pushes against his shoulder. "Just get off my back, Quinn."

"Wake up, Puck. Like it or not—you like being in this club, these people have become your friends, even if you used to dump them in the trash and lock them in porty potties. If  _you_  want to be a Lima loser for the rest of your life, that's fine but I'm not going to stand back and watch you drag the rest of us down with you," she states, her eyes cold and hard. She's about to turn away before deciding against it, adding, "Miss Pillsbury bought us a spot in the yearbook. Be there and show everyone you're a leader and we're here to get this club back together, or don't show up and show everyone all you're concerned about is your popularity. I'll have my answer either way."

She leaves him with that.

.

She's not surprised when he doesn't show up.

.

Somehow she manages to get the group back together—they're not a team again, not yet— but she manages to convince Miss Pillsbury to take a picture of them all, for the yearbook. She convinced them you don't actually have to like each other to be a team and she thinks the fact she persuaded them with a mattress commercial she managed to book them really helped, too.

Artie vowed to never speak to Tina again now that Mike joined their Honors division as a spare member to be closer to Tina. Santana and Brittany are back but with the truth revealed, everyone pretty much hates them. Finn and Rachel stand on opposites ends of the room. Kurt is afraid to make eye contact with anyone and came to school dressed in same clothes as yesterday. Puck refused to come. They're a bunch of clawed off pieces of a puzzle and they're going to need a lot of glue and tape to make them seem like one piece again, but it's worth it. She thinks— _hopes_.

The picture that ends up in the yearbook is of the entire group, with the exception of Puck. Sh stands in between Santana and Brittany. It figures.

.

Miss Pillsbury is banned from coming to Sectionals. They received a bunch of mattresses as payment for their online-strictly commercial (and Quinn promising to do their taxes for a year) and Miss Pillsbury, not knowing accepting the payment would mean instant disqualification, used one to sleep on when Coach Sue locked her into the choir room accidentally.

She wishes she'd been able to stop her favorite teacher in time, because it would've meant the world to her to have the first person who believed in her (besides her parents) to come see their at their first actual competition. (Locals really didn't count, considering they won by default).

She manages to convince the Spanish teacher, who Miss Pillsbury _really_  likes, like  _really_ , to come instead of her and to keep her on the phone so she can still be with them in some way. It's not anything like the real thing, but it's a nice thought.

They're one member short because Mike isn't  _actually_  allowed to compete in the varsity division so they had to bribe a kid called Jacob Ben Israel to fill in. He has major performance anxiety and kept trying to hold her hand in the bus the entire way to the Haverbrook academy.

Everything is just going perfectly  _dandy_. If you can't detect the sarcasm here, you need to see a doctor.

She knows the saying goes like  _you can't always get what you want_ —which is Puck, damnit, she wants him here, to be part of the team,  _their_  team and to keep them together—but she's really not getting what she needs either. Which is a team that doesn't look like it's going to fall apart any second now.

Artie keeps ramming himself into a wall with his wheelchair and Jacob keeps threatening to pee his pants and she thinks Santana's stress eating herself to death. Mr. Schue is currently trying to get Brittany to stop rocking back and forth but nothing seems to be working.

"We're doomed," she breathes to herself, ready to go into panic mode herself. How are they supposed to win or even try to win when they can't even get it together?

"Not if it's up to me," a familiar voice states from behind her her and she doesn't need to hear the multiple exclaims and thankful sighs of his name to know it's him.

"Glad to see you could make it," she remarks sarcastically as she crosses her arms over her chest. She's trying really hard to contain and hide her excitement, but when she sees his smirk she knows she isn't doing a very good job.

She had hoped this hadn't just all been community service to him, and know she knew it wasn't— she just felt so happy to know she hadn't been wrong about him.

"Better late than never, right?" He arches an eyebrow before stepping towards Artie to wheel him away from the wall. He nods over to Jacob, a scowl on his face. "Jason, I'm back, get lost."

Jacob swallows hard, nodding in agreement before hurrying away. Finn reaches out to fistbump him before clapping him on the shoulder. "Good to have you back, bro."

"Yea, yea.." He looks at Quinn who gives him a small, but encouraging smile, before he looks at the rest of the group. "Now, who's ready to kick some ass?"

.

With a score of 39.678 it's safe to say they did, in fact, kick some ass. Regionals, here we come!

.

She meets a guy named Sam, who's team captain and in the varsity division of an opposing decathlon team by the name of ' _mental adrenaline_ '. He's nice and cute and funny and he likes her. Plus, the whole forbidden romance thing has it's allure.

Most of all, he's single, and that's a nice change.

(Speaking of single, rumour has it Santana and Puck broke up after sectionals because of her backstabbing spy business but she doesn't care. He could've had her all this time and he didn't want her—he had his shot and he blew it.)

Of course,  _Rachel_  has to ruin it by revealing to the club she's literally sleeping with the enemy, figurally speaking of course, after she saw her and Sam on a date in Breadstix. She knew she should've been more subtle about it, but it's not like she'd done it a dozen time before. Neither the sneaking around part  _or_  the dating part.

Everybody absolutely  _hates_  her for doing something fun for the first time in her life so she's forced to stop seeing him to remain part of the club. At least, as far as they all know. She just has to be extra sneaky about meeting him.

Naturally, it's Puck who figures out she's lying.

"Nice hickey," he states, moving her hair away from her neck before she slaps his hand away. He snorts, turning to a freshman and telling him to ' _beat it_ ' so he can lean against his locker.

"I burned myself with a curling iron this morning," she lies straight through her teeth, adding snarkily, " _Not_  that it's any of your business."

"Cut the crap, I'm a pro at hickeys. I can make them into shapes like balloon animals and everything. I can tell the real from the fake," he replies, and he's look a little—jealous? No, she needs to stop making things up. Besides, even if he was, he had no right to be. She was not his property, she  _had_  been his dirty little secret for too long but that was over now, too.

"You don't say," she remarks dryly as she slams her locker in protest, stalking away from him but of course, he manages to keep up with her.

"Come on, Q. I thought you were all about team spirit and shit, and now you're hooking up with some loser from Carmel?" He grabs her arm and his voice sounds a little desperate. Oh, how the tables have turned. What ever happened to Noah Puckerman...

"I'm not and even if I were, why should you care?" she bites back as she stops walking, having reached her maths classroom. "Frankly, this jealousy thing you're doing— it's annoying." She mimics a bright smile before sporting her signature cold stare.

"I don't," he snorts dryly, as if she's just being silly little inexperienced Quinn, "As a matter of fact, I have a date with Brittany. Tonight."

"What a lucky girl," Quinn narrows her eyes and she wishes she didn't feel the little pang of jealousy in her chest. God, why does she even care? She should've known liking him didn't just go away because she decided she couldn't anymore. "Well, have fun at your date. As will I, tonight."

He seems lost before holds up in hands and coldly replies, "Yeah, you just—have a blast."

"I will!" She (a little too) happily replies before rushing into her classroom. Pulling out her phone, she creates a quick text message to Sam asking if he wants to come over tonight.

No more silly little inexperienced Quinn. It's time to live a little.

.

He kisses her hot and fast before moving onto her neck. His hand is on her thigh and it's moving dangerously close to her— _lady parts_. She feels like the cross around her neck is burning into her skin but then she imagines what Puck's doing right now—kissing Brittany, touching Brittany, doing a lot more than just having his hand on her thigh.

When she proposed they'd study the Korean Economy, this year's Regionals' economy topic, she hadn't imagined herself losing her virginity on his unmade star wars sheets with Barry Manilow playing on the background.

Puck. Kissing Brittany, moving his lips over hers and touching her skin and telling her sweet nothings just to get into her pants. Ugh, she hates him.

Sam's sweet. He is.

.

"So, how was your date?" He asks, trying to seem uninterested, from behind a shelf of books on endangered animals.

She sighs loudly, looking up from the encyclopedia in her hands before putting it back on the shelf and blocking Puck's vision. He reappears by taking out a different book himself and he raises his eyebrows, awaiting response.

"It was great—Sam is  _very_  experienced. Knew just what I liked," she answers boredly, flipping through the pages of a small book that was previously tucked away on the shelf. "What about you?"

Her head snaps up at his next words to reveal a hurt look on his face. "Yeah, I—I couldn't go through with it."

"Why not?" She asks quietly, her heart beating loudly in her chest.

He clears his throat, and he looks so honest in that moment that she doesn't know what to believe. "I kept thinking of this other girl and while that's just another normal Friday night for me, it didn't feel right. Not this time."

Other girl? Santana? Her? Maybe he just suffered from erectile disfunction and was afraid to admit it. That sounded more logical.

"Oh," she stated lamely, not sure what to say. She's looking into his eyes for a few seconds too long, feeling her heart speed up and her palms get sweaty when Miss Pillsbury draws their attention back to the front of the library. Sam?

She clears her throat quietly, starting nervously, "Guys, this is Sam Evans, he just transferred and comes from a team that's been five times consecutive champion and he'd like to join our group."

"No frickin' way, he's just here to spy!"

"Yeah, I would know," Santana confirms, her arms crossed as she stares down the bottle blonde in front of her. "He even reeks like deceit."

"More spares? Great!" Finn exclaims, waving his long arms around.

Rachel fumes, "Are you  _trying_  to ruin my life?"

"Miss Pillsbury, why is his mouth so big?"

"Guys, he just moved into the district with his parents. I checked," Miss Pillsbury tries to explain but the room just bursts into loud protests again.

"This is bullshit," Puck barks angrily and most of her friends nod in confirmation.

"Sam?" She questions warily and he steps forward, taking her hand.

"I like you, Quinn, and at least now we don't have to be afraid to be together," he smiles and leans in to kiss her and she turns her head so it lands on her cheek before sending him what she hopes is a convincing smile.

"Great."

She must say, seeing Puck so angry  _does_  feel very good.

.

She figures she needs to take the backburner for a while, now that Sam's in their team and she's dating him and all. They just need to calm down and get used to the idea of Sam before she can start commanding them around again.

It isn't hard, she was never one to be in the spotlight all the time anyway and this gives her more time to spend with Sam. (Eating lunch at a separate table with him was never part of her plans, but so be it.)

She notices a change in Puck and tries to ignore it for a few days, not even thinking of bringing it up in their biweekly tutor session until he receives a text and looks like he's seen a ghost for minutes after.

"What's going on?" She asks, a little hesitation in her voice. Trying to lighten the (now weeks long) mood, she teasingly adds, "Did you accidentally knock up someone or something?"

"Like you give a shit," he replies aggravatedly from his slouched position in the chair across from her, not even bothering to look up from the circle he'd been drawing for the past five minutes.

"I.." she bites down on her lip, reaching out to grab his hand and hating herself for doing so. "I do care, about you, Puck."

"It's just my asshole dad," he sighs, shaking his head to himself as if he's scolding himself for even bringing it up.

"What about him?" She asks softly, as he intertwines her fingers. She doesn't say anything.

"Just the same old shit that always happens, and I can't really talk to Finn about it because his dad, is you know, dead and it's just fucking bullshit," he sighs again, running his free hand through his mohawk. "He's never around and when he is, he's either asking for money or trying to make me feel like shit. I don't really care because at least that means he's leaving my sister alone, but my mom she  _knows_  and she just, she  _doesn't_ —fuck, why am I even telling you all of this?"

She takes in a sharp breath, swallowing tightly before speaking, "My dad, he.. He's this really religious morally correct, supposedly always good-doing family man, right?" She tells him, looking at him to see if he's still following, forcing a small smile on her face (she's Quinn Fabray, after all, and Quinn Fabray does not show weakness). "So one day, my mom comes home and, she finds him in bed with this tatted-up skank, right? And she, she doesn't leave him. He just proved  _again_ , that he isn't who he portrays to be which I already knew, of course, because I was never good enough for him. Not pretty enough, not smart enough, just not Christian enough."

He raises his eyebrows skeptically, "So what you're trying to say is, all dads are assholes?"

" _Nooo_ , what I'm trying to say is that when you're in love, it's sometimes hard to see the bad parts of the person you're in love with," she untwined their fingers, slapping his hand lightly. "And sometimes that's okay," she looks at him sincerely with a bit of pity, "Other times it isn't."

"You know you're pretty much the smartest girl in this entire shithole, right?" He grins lazily and she doesn't know why it's making her feel so, so—warm. Until he opens his mouth again and all she can do is roll her eyes.

"Plus, the fact you're hot as a pixie is only an added bonus."

"I pretty much just rephrased 'suck it up' ," she smiles teasingly, poking him with her pencil before trying to change the subject (because, they,  _she_ , they don't do this—the feelings and talking about important stuff), ignoring his latter comment. "Now how about we focus on those formulas?"

.

There's a  _decathalist_  going around, ranking every member of the decathlon team based on hotness and sexual activity.

"What is this? Did I miss something and did we somehow miraculously end up back in third grade?" Quinn asks as she storms into the library (which lately hasn't been too occupied since ' _loser_ ' might be contagious—see if she cares!) and smacks the infamous list down on their regular table. The old librarian lady just sighs loudly, having long given up trying to shush them.

"I just finished a time machine," Brittany remarks seriously and everyone just waves her off.

"What is it?" Finn asks curiously, trying to look at whatever the fuss is about. Slightly frowning, he adds, "It's not my calculus homework, is it?"

"Nice," Puck snorts, pushing the list away from him with an amused smirk. "About time someone realized my true talents."

Of course the ass, who she is currently not fighting with and she'd like to keep it that way for longer than five minutes, made second on the list.

Rachel huffs, crossing her arms over her chest, as she bites, "It's a scandalous list horridly ranking us based on vile and frankly, disgusting features."

"I c-c-an't believe I m-m-made number one," Tina gushes, one hand on her round belly, her eyes bright and happy. Artie doesn't look too happy about that. If looks could kill, she would  _hate_  to be Tina right now.

"There's no denying you made it to anything  _less_  than home base, Tubbers," Santana remarks nastily, rolling her eyes before straightening her ponytail. "Besides, I don't get the big deal. It's a dumb list. It'll be yesterday's news by lunch."

"So will we be if we don't find out who did it," Quinn snaps, elaborating aggravatedly, "Miss Pillsbury just encountered me in the hallway and has informed me she all wants to see you in her office, privately, because if she doesn't find out who made this list— we  _all_  get suspended."

There's a loud interruption of groans in the room since they might get suspended and probably because she was being more bitchy as usual. Can you blame her? She might get suspended! It'll go on her permanent record. Goodbye Yale! (Also, she does not care she made it last on the list. But -5? Seriously?)

Seriously.

They need to get to the bottom of this. Fast.

.

At first, they (well,  _she_ ) all suspect the newcomers, Mercedes and Matt who probably want to get rid of the competition. It's the most logical explanation. But then it's announced the list was published hours before they even joined and they get crossed off her, well, _Figurative Decathalist Of Who The Decathalist Was Who Made The Original Decathalist_.

She knows it's Miss Pillsbury's job to find out who did it, since she's their teacher and all, and she completely trusts her with the responsibility but something keeps nagging on her.

 _Last_? She's never finished last on anything before in her entire life.

Since it's a slow week in the decathlon club and she's ahead of the material this week, anyway, she decides it time to work on her reputation. She's never been one to long for popularity—her ambition to be successful in school outranking popularity by far—but she knows her sister was head-cheerio and her mother was genetically installed to be popular and to be fair, it would be nice, to be  _liked_. By the entire school.

Forgetting about the consequences for the first time in her life she decides to find herself some Jacob Ben Israel, he'll be surely able to help.

Having a bad reputation was better than no reputation, after all.

.

It gets out of hand.

She didn't mean for it to get out of hand. She swears.

At first, it was just innocent. Jacob Ben said he could follow her around and take some pictures of her to publish them in the Nutcracker, in return for one pair of her panties, and then it all escalated. (Not with the panties, she just handed the creep a freshly bought pair, realizing too late she left the tags on. Oh well.)

She hadn't planned on the escalation part. She had just wanted to create some drama, and like Santana said, it would've been old news by the end of the day, just long enough for her to have a whisp of the whole being popular phenomenon.

She went to dinner with Sam, and since he was her boyfriend that wasn't too bad, right? Besides, he was number five on the list.

Maybe meeting up with number six, Finn, at his locker and asking for his notes on US History, proceeding to laugh and touch his arm while JBI took the shots was a bit too much, but the confused look (he didn't remember taking US History, nor did he get why she laughed so loudly when he told her he probably forgot his notes at home) on his face had been totally worth it.

Proceeding to lead on Puck for her own good—well, it  _hadn't_  been one of her finer moments.

"Hey stranger," she whispers into his ear seductively with a teasing edge to her voice, standing on her tiptoes.

"Quinn, what are you doing?" He says, raising his eyebrows and the fact she got -5 on the decathalist kept burning in the back of her mind. He pushes her back a little, to look at her face.

"Just saying hi," she explains, a blush forming on her cheeks because debate—debate is her strong suit, lying? That's a different story. She quickly glances over to Jacob Ben to see if he's taken the picture and she immediately feels dirty. This wasn't her, at all. But being Quinn Fabray, she couldn't half-ass it.

"Go say hi to your boyfriend," he retorts cynically, sounding incredibly pissed off, and for the moment being she forgets her original reasoning for saying hi. Right now, she's just offended he's acting like this.

"Wow, you sound awfully jealous for some guy who's supposedly dating Brittany," she remarks snarkily, not caring if she's right or not. To be honest, she doesn't even know if he's claiming to be dating the Prettier Blonde right now but she wants to hurt him, badly, and if that means bringing up his slutty reputation—so be it. All is fair in We Kissed A Few Times And Now We Constantly Act Possessive Of Each Other Without Having Reason To Because We Don't Like Each Other Remember And Also We're Dating Other People and war,  _right_?

"I'm not dating Brittany, but since you wanna go there-" he tightens his jaw and grip on the strap of his backpack, "He made fifth on the list, Q,  _fifth_."

"What are you trying to say?" She breathes heavily, trying not to cause a scene by keeping her voice as low as possible.

"That you deserve better than some, some Big Mouth Biebster!" He lowers his voice nearing the end of the sentence, clenching his jaw to contain his anger. Why is he angry? He doesn't get to be angry. She's furious.

She grunts, glaring straight into his eyes, wishing God would grant her Medusa's gift for the time being. "Who do you propose instead, Puck? You, who made a not-so-surprisingly number three on the list? You're the biggest french whore of them all!"

He takes a deep breath, forcing the words out of his mouth, "I just, I thought you would wait."

"Excuse me?" She says a little too loudly, earning a few stares. "I'm not your property, Puckerman. You didn't want me."

"I  _did_!" He exclaims, clearly annoyed. He lowly adds, "I wanted to be with you." As a response she pulls him into an empty classroom. If she's going to lose her dignity over this stupid argument, it's going to be in private.

She runs a hand through her head and wishes she could hate him, because that would make everything so. much. easier. She knows they're alone but it seems to important to yell about, so she lowers her voice and tells him, "I  _didn't_ , not that it's any of your business, but I didn't, okay?"

His face lights up and he untangles his brows for some reason as he looks up from his shoes and smirks widely. What, like he wanted her to save her precious virginity for him, or something? Well tough luck, because that will  _never_  happen.

"Q, I.." He starts and she cuts him off, because it hurts. It hurts with him, she likes him so much it  _hurts_ , and she's not sure it supposed to be that way. Not when she likes Sam and it doesn't hurt.

"No. Because this is exactly the reason I can't be with you. I'll always be the girl you hide with in empty classrooms to uphold your reputation while you sleep with five, ten other girls. You're a scared little boy, and if you just for one second had believed that  _I_ , not Santana, knew exactly who you were we wouldn't be in this situation. I—I can't do it anymore, okay?"

She expects him to say something, anything, but he doesn't. And that just proves her point. He doesn't like her, he likes the things she stands for. Hard to get, all around good,  _virgin_  girl, someone he'd love to conquest and corrupt.

That doesn't meant it doesn't still hurt, badly, when she walks away from him.

.

"I can't believe you did this!" Sam exclaims the next day as she's explaining something to Kurt. He slams down the Nutcracker on the table and it's a little ironic it's the second time this week this has happened. To fed up with Puck and herself, she'd forgotten all about her deal with the devil. Turns out she sold her sold to real deal.

 _ **QUINN FABRAY:**_ _THE SIZE TWO TEENAGE DREAM WHO HOOKED UP WITH how MANY GUYS THIS WEEK?_ JBI has the official inside scoop!

She swallows hard as she looks at the pictures. There's one of her and Sam out to dinner, her laughing and touching Finn at his locker and one of her and Puck near the water fountain with her whispering into his ear.

"Is this true?" Sam demands and she's never seen sweet Sam so upset.

"You set me up!" Finn adds, holding up another copy of the newest edition of the Nutcracker in her face after he storms in. She can feel Puck's glare into her back but she doesn't dare to turn around. "Rachel  _totally_  thinks I'm cheating on her."

"I can explain," she stammers but apparently that's all Sam needs to hear. He shakes his head to himself, his face cold and hard. "You tried to make it seem like you had three guys wanting your affection, when in reality it's only two. I'm done."

"No, Sam, wait!" She tries as he storms away but when she sees Finn's sad expression, she realizes she's hurt more bargained for. How Christian of her this all had been. Daddy would be proud. "Finn, I—I can fix this."

"I don't want you to, Quinn," he says quietly before he walks off into the same direction as Sam. The exit.

She turns around to look at Puck, giving him a desperate look, hoping he could at least understand — but instead he shakes his head and mumbles something about forgetting his 'fuckin' algebra book' before walking off into The Dreaded Exit. (He doesn't return.)

She slouches back into her chair, no one even trying to say anything to her. They all hate her. Why shouldn't they? She's a horrible person. (Add selfish to the list because right now she feels like her heart got ripped out, and she has no right to. She chose to hurt these people, they didn't hurt her.)

She can't exactly pinpoint the moment she became this person, the person who disappointed her friends, hurt the people she cared about and tried to be someone she was not—an  _awful_  person. All because of some stupid popularity thing? If she looks at the statistics, she had twelve friends before and now, post-popularity?

Now she doesn't have anyone.

.

Tina made the list, something about having a bad reputation being better than no reputation.

Silly naive girl.

.

She's never been this depressed.

She got hit by a car three days ago in the parking lot (because she was texting and walking, apologizing to her friends for the thousandth time), and when the doctor informed her she was fine, just needed to strictly rest, but might suffer some minor memory loss— she lost it.

Her brain, it was who she was. Without it? She was  _nothing_.

Even less than the ghost of the girl that went by the name of Quinn Fabray that she was now, still trying to right her wrongs.

Now, three days post accident and still wearing the same clothes (which weren't so much Kurt's fashion blog worthy) she'd worn returning back to school two days ago—she was determined not to miss any classes, since this was probably the last time she'd be able to  _actually_  remember anything.

She feels a little dizzy, not a good sign, in Biology during lab and lets Puck (when did he even get into this class—her memory's already getting hazy) convince her that a) inhaling substances might wasn't such a good idea right now and to b) take her to the school nurse. Sometimes he was very, very smart.

"Let me run some test," the nurse tells them with a sigh without actually doing anything else beside look at her, which basically means she's going out for a smoke break to return with an ' _you're completely fine_ '. Yet, she's not fine.

"Do you think I'll be alright?" She asks softly as she continues to rest her head on the examining table. Maybe he can offer her some kind of comfort before she dies from early dementia.

(She's not normally this frickin' melodramatic, okay? But desperate times call for desperate measures.)

"Why don't you ask your boyfriend?" He mimics a sweet smile before going back into his normal face, sarcastically adding, "Oh,  _right_." He spins around in his chair, rolling his eyes.

She freezes, it was a low blow even for Puck, but he was right. Sam was nowhere to be seen even though he informed her per text message (after the entire decathalist fiasco) that he was going to see his grandparents in Kentucky. For how long? Undetermined.

They hadn't officially broken up yet, but the fact he'd been ignoring her since The Textmessage and hadn't said anything since the I'm Done Statement pretty much confirmed it was coming.

She doesn't mind, per se, about the break-up, but she does mind that she hurt him, and it looks like he's not so easily forgiving as Puck, who'd surprisingly been okay with it. Hence the I'm taking you to see a nurse thing.

She remains quiet, fiddling with the hem of her dress.

"He's not into you like I am, you know," he states lazily, like it's just normal to blurt out confusing things like that. He spins in his chair again. "Like fuck yeah, I'd like to get under your dress, but it's not just about that."

She purses her lips and sits up, giving him a stern look. Why does he think he just gets to say things like that? Make her heart race again and all, just when she thought she was over him. She's supposed to be stronger, more independent. Here she is, melting because of his oh-so-heartfelt love confession. "You suck. You suck. You  _suck_."

"Well, if it isn't Loopy Quinn," he mutters under his breath, leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his head. "If you want my advice, stop acting like such a basket case, maybe take a relaxing shower or some shit. You're not just smart, you're a lot of things and I think you know that."

She sighs deeply, biting down onto her bottom lip. "You really mean that?"

He pauses, leaning forward to touch her cheek, very gently and butterfly inducing, if she may add. Damnit. "Yes."

He grins as he moves his thumb over the soft rosy skin of her cheek. "Especially now."

.

She doesn't want to screw this up again. If she's really going to do this, give and get a second chance to and with Puck, she needs to do it right.

That is her original mindset until Sam returns from Kentucky and tells her he wants to try again, that he overreacted, even buys her a promise ring.

She really likes Puck, she does, but maybe she needs to give Sam another chance. She was the one who screwed up after all.

.

Some guy from the school board or state comes in and offers them jean jackets with THE BRAINIACS in bright red letters on the back. Apparently Miss Pillsbury had to pay him in  _sexy currency_ so the jean jackets idea gets canceled.

Maybe it's for the better. All this swag just distracted them from the real prize. First place at Regionals.

.

"Lucy?"

Quinn's head snaps up from her book, her body spread on her bed as she looks at Sam, sitting on her desk chair. "Excuse me?" Her heart is pounding.

He looks almost hurt for a second before he breaks into a smile, "Nothing."

.

She comes to school to find her face plastered on the walls, everywhere. Except, it's not her face. Not anymore.

Before she got to McKinley, she lived in a different district, but it might as well have been a different life. She was chubbier, had a crooked nose, a lot of acne… even more of a social pariah than she currently was—it was horrible. She'd never felt so alone.

Her dad helped her with the nose, her mom put her on a strict diet and Miss Pillsbury knew just how to get rid of the acne when she first came to McKinley.

When she transferred to McKinley as her new self, she blended. No one noticed her. She felt invisible, but not tormented. She could now focus on what she'd been trying to do all along. School.

Her face, it was her face, the old one, but it was hers. In yellow block letters it spelled JUICY LUCY and underneath it said in the same font LUCY CABOOSEY. Everyone must know by now.

People were staring and she couldn't get herself to move, tears forming in her eyes. Who would do something like this? Rachel finds her and is about to say something, pity in her eyes when Quinn decides storming off is the best next thing to disappearing into the ground.

She runs onto the parking lot, finally able to breathe again when she spots Sam.

"Sam," she breathes, relieved but then a dozen or so minions wearing the same blue jacket as him step out from behind him.

"What's this?" She asks, confused, her voice small as she stares at the minions. It's only now she realizes it spells MENTAL ADRENALINE on his left chest. She can't breathe. Her chest feels heavy. "You—it was you, wasn't it! You, you called me Lucy the other night!"

"I guess I just wanted to see if it was real for myself, that you had been lying to me and to everyone else," he says, his eyes cold and hard and she's not used to this. He was always so sweet to her. "That you were as much of a fraud everyone said you were. That I had enough reason to destroy you and your brainiacs."

Tears spring into her eyes out of anger, "You leave my friends alone." His minions laugh harshly and manically. Did she just enter a bad lifetime movie?

"Don't worry, are you really sure they're even still your friends? You lied to them after all," a darker girl speaks, her smirk malicious. She looks at Sam, desperately, pleadingly, hopefully. But nothing.

"It's smart, I have to give you that," Quinn retorts, not looking away from Sam. If he can live with what he's doing to her, he can damnwell see her fall apart in front of him. Tears roll down her cheeks, and she almost doesn't want to give him the satisfaction, but she has to, "Breaking the heart of your star opponent a week before competition."

"Well, truth is, Liz Fabray," he says almost sincerely, an egg carefully held in his hand, some minion is the back edging him on to ' _just do it_ ', "You broke mine first."

He cracks the egg on her head, officially starting a crossfire of eggs thrown at her, by the rest of his—teammates.

She stands there for a while after they leave in their expensive jeeps, then decides it's time for revenge by the Brainiacs. That is, if they still want her.

.

"I can't believe they did this!" Tina exclaims, and the redness of her face has Quinn doubting if it's good for her baby to get so worked up.

"I'm going to break his fucking face," Puck growls, getting up from his chair and bawling his fists. Finn follows him, "I think we need to get a message across."

"Clearly," Mike adds, his jaw clenched as points over at Quinn. "This is ridiculous."

"I have so many angry feelings right now, I feel the necessity to express myself in song," Rachel breathes heavily, fanning air into her face with both hands.

Santana swings her ponytail of her shoulder, cracking her knuckles, "I think I needs to introduce Trouty Mouth to something I like to call a  _Lopez-tration_ , brought personally to him by an original Lima Heights Adjacent citizen."

"Guys, calm down," Emma tries to reach the kids of the sound of their own voices, her voice pitchy. "Violence is not the answer."

"Stop the violence," Brittany pitches in, nodding profusely to herself.

"Will you look at her?" Artie fires back, motioning over to Quinn, "She looks like, like she just had unprotected sex with a male chicken!"

"You guys don't hate me?" Quinn asks stupidly, she had at least expected to have to write a formal apology in Lima's local newspaper.

"Are you shitting me?" Puck blurts out over a chorus of ' _no's_ ' and ' _what why's_ ' and a ' _hell to the no_ ' from Mercedes.

She gives Puck a thankful smile, before looking over at her friends. They all liked her. Her.

Emma puts her hand on Quinn's shoulder, squeezing tightly (and Quinn notices she doesn't wear a glove or uses a napkin), "We all have skeletons in our closets, Quinn, it's nothing to be ashamed about."

She hands her a pamphlet, patting her on the back softly and giving her a big smile.

**SO YOUR BF TURNED OUT TO BE YOUR ARCHENEMY** _AND_ **A BOTTLE BLONDE?**

_tips to avoiding a re-happening of this event inside: now_ with _extra discount coupons for Lima's third-best optician!_

.

Quinn manages to convince everyone (mainly Puck) that the best revenge was beating them fair and square at Regionals, but she thinks Finn and Puck still went out and toilet-papered Sam's house. He deserved it after he basically toilet-papered her entire existence.

.

"I want you guys to know that, this club? It wouldn't be the same without you guys and this, my life, I guess—my life would suck without you. And I don't care if we win or not tonight, because I'm proud of how far we've gotten," Quinn tells them, famous last words and all, as they all wait for the competition to start.

"Besides the fact Finn got a B plus for the first time in his life and Brittany learned to write with a pen instead of crayons," she smiles tearfully, and damnit, she usually doesn't do this. She's cried more in the past months than she's ever done in her life. "I—I made some amazing friends."

She looks at Puck and he smirks, mouthing ' _pussy_ ' and causing her to shake her head until he breaks into an encouraging smile. She ignores the way her heart swells to ten times it's size.

"I love you guys.. and you Miss Pillsbury," she adds as they all laugh a little, Emma sniffing loudly.

She sniffs herself, squeezing Rachel's and Santana's hand—the girls sitting next to her, "Thank you."

Tina is full on sobbing, other's silently and sadly wiping away a tear or two and she's never seen anyone be as much of an ugly crier as Kurt.

Puck sighs loudly, as if he's about to say something against his will (maybe he finally got sentimental), "Guys, come one, we have one thing they don't."

Rachel sits up, smiling brightly, obviously hoping the answer's  _RACHEL BARBRA BERRY_. "What?"

"I've got nothing. I thought someone would fill in the blanks," he shrugs lamely, running a hand over his mohawk and sending Quinn a cheeky grin. She rolls her eyes, smacking the back of his head before making everyone chuckle and lightening the mood by adding:

"Brittany's extensive knowledge of cat diseases, of course."

.

He finds her in the bathroom, which wasn't per se a romantic location you'd think.

"Puck, what are you doing here?" She yelps as she almost bumps into him, coming out of her stall. She walks over to the facet and washes her hand.

"Just wanted to wish you luck," he says a little nervously and she gives him a look, drying her hands. "You couldn't have waited five seconds until I'd be back?"

"No," he breathes out heavily and he's looking a little funny.

"Are you okay?" She asks skeptically as she reaches out to touch his forehead. It's warm, but his skin is always warm if she remembers correctly.

"Good luck," he says again and she's about to offer him some Advil because he's acting super weird, when he connects their lips.

She kisses him back, on the girls' bathroom, moments before the most important moment in her life. His lips are warm and steady against hers, and she feels light in her head.

"Break a leg," she whispers against his lips, her eyes closed and she feels him smile against her skin.

"I love you," he replies without skipping a beat, and when she opens her eyes she finds him smiling. She doesn't have time to reply because a bell goes off, signaling they're up. The moment of truth has arrived. It doesn't look like he needed an answer back, more like he needed to let her know he did. That he—he loved her.

He kisses her on more time and she'd be lying if she'd say she wasn't a  _little bit_  disappointed she had to go to an academic decathalon right now. Okay, she was. A lot.

She loves him, too.

.

"W-W-Why is dark, dark and l-l-light, light," Tina starts off strong in her subjective speech event, and Quinn's mentally cheering her on from behind the scenes.

"I think—OUCH—uhm, that, I—," Tina pauses, letting out a large breathe, "I'm fine," she waves off Mike who's about to run up the stage and hand her a water bottle. "I'm fi—NEEE ARGH!" Quinn is starting to worry here. Surely the thought of why dark was dark and light was light wasn't that painful. "Oh God," she breathes heavily, leaning over forward, "Oh GOD! I think—I think—I think my water just broke!"

Quinn lets out a yelp, signaling for Mercedes to fill in for her as she rushes towards Tina with Mike and Finn to get her towards a hospital. ASAP!

Tina just went into labor in the middle of her speech. Perfect.

.

Other than the slight misdemeanor that was one of their team members going into labor— everything went surprisingly okay.

She just doesn't know if okay is cutting it anymore.

.

They lose. Puck offers to sit Shiva with her. Which is sweet, if she'd been Jewish.

.

So, they lost? So, what?

Miss Pillsbury just informed them they get another year thanks to her not giving up on them, and fighting for them to get another year and she couldn't be more thankful.

More thankful for her amazing teacher, for her amazing friends, and her amazing, amazing.. boyfriend? Boyfriend.

They have a celebratory dinner at Breadstix, with extra chairs and spare tables being pulled out so they can sit in one large section of the restaurant and for the first time in forever, she feels like she has an actual family—one that chooses to love her. For better or worse.

While Rachel is naming all of her awards, Finn nodding boredly along but there's a loving spark in his eyes, and Santana is showing Mercedes how they shake butts in Lima Heights and Artie and Tina and Mike are hunched over a new Marvel movie trailer on Tina's phone and Matt and Brittany are competing over who can balance a spoon on their nose longer and Puck's hand is on her thigh, holding hers—she hears that one song play, that played at their very first official study session, and thinks, well, she used to be a small town girl, living in a lonely world, except now she's not so lonely anymore.

_Streetlight, people / Livin' just to find emotion / Hiding somewhere in the night / Don't stop believin' / Hold on to that feeling…_

.

fin.

.

**Author's Note:**

> a/n pls review and i will thankfully message you back with my full appreciation and sweet, sweet lady kisses. (no refunds, some parts may not be included)


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